A Little Bit of Hindsight Bias: Reviewing the Drafting of Sam Bowie

What was the worst decision in the history of the NBA draft? For many NBA fans, the Portland Trail Blazers selection of Sam Bowie in 1984 – with Michael Jordan still on the board – must rank towards the top of any list of bad draft day decisions.

Bowie played for 10 seasons in the NBA. He was never named to an All-NBA team, never played in an All-Star game, and he never played for a team that won the NBA title. In fact, Bowie was never even a full-time starting player. In every season he played he came off the bench in some of the games he played.

In contrast, Jordan… well, Jordan’s list of accolades is familiar to every NBA fan. When we consider the entire careers of these two players, it seems pretty obvious that someone in Portland in 1984 just blew this decision.

Hindsight Bias?

Of course at this point – with the complete story of each player’s career known — our perspective might suffer from “hindsight bias.”

Robert Shiller – author of Irrational Exuberance – defines hindsight bias as “…a tendency to think that one would have known actual events were coming before they happened, had one been present then or had reason to pay attention. Hindsight bias encourages a view of the world as more predictable than it really is.”

At this point in history, we know that Jordan became Jordan and Bowie… well, didn’t. So it’s natural to think that we knew this all along. And thus, decision-makers in Portland – who clearly didn’t know this in 1984 – must not be too smart.

Just a Bit of Bias

But let’s go back and re-visit this decision and eliminate most of the hindsight bias. I say most, because I don’t want to go all the way back to the decision in 1984. No, I want to re-visit how this decision looked in 1985, or after each player’s rookie season. If we only consider each player’s first season, does the Portland decision still look so bad?

To answer this question, I evaluated every single player from the 1984-85 season (according to the Wages of Wins metrics). I then ranked the rookies in terms of Wins Produced. Here are the top ten rookies from the 1984-85 campaign:

1. Michael Jordan: 23.3 Wins Produced, 0.355 WP48, drafted #3

2. Hakeem Olajuwon: 15.0 Wins Produced, 0.247 WP48, drafted #1

3. Charles Barkley: 13.2 Wins Produced, 0.270 WP48, drafted #5

4. Sam Bowie: 10.1 Wins Produced, 0.218 WP48, drafted #2

5. Otis Thorpe: 6.8 Wins Produced, 0.170 WP48, drafted #9

6. Sam Perkins: 6.6 Wins Produced, 0.136 WP48, drafted #4

7. Alvin Robertson: 6.0 Wins Produced, 0.170 WP48, drafted #7

8. Michael Cage: 3.9 Wins Produced, 0.110 WP48, drafted #14

9. John Stockton: 3.2 Wins Produced, 0.101 WP48, drafted #16

10. Tim McCormick: 2.7 Wins Produced, 0.081 WP48, drafted #12

When we look at this list we are first struck by how amazing the draft was in 1984. A number of truly great players entered the league that year. And this list doesn’t even include Kevin Willis or Jerome Kersey (who ranked 13th and 15th in Wins Produced as rookies).

Although the plethora of talent is interesting, let’s focus on where Bowie ranks in this very talented class. Remember – as I noted earlier — Bowie doesn’t have a stellar reputation today. But if we look back on his production from just his rookie season, our perception of Bowie changes. An average player posts a WP48 [Wins Produced per 48 minutes] of 0.100. Bowie’s mark was twice as good as the average, and not terribly far behind the per-minute production offered by Hakeem Olajuwon.

Yes, Jordan was already amazing as a rookie, posting a WP48 that was more than three times the average. So MJ was better than Bowie. Bowie, though, was clearly a very good player as a rookie. And when we consider Clyde Drexler’s performance in 1984-85 – 14.5 Wins Produced and 0.272 WP48 – we can see why Portland looked past MJ (yes, we are still employing just a bit of hindsight bias when we look at Drexler in 84-85).

Yes, I know. Portland would probably been better off with both MJ and Drexler. Nevertheless, I think it’s important to note that our perception of the choice to take Bowie is colored by what happened after his rookie season. After his first season Bowie’s career was wrecked by injury. Consequently our view of Bowie’s skills has been shaped by the many poor performances he offered later on. I think, though, that The Bowie choice should be evaluated in terms of how he played before he was hurt. And that performance was very good.

The Greatness of the rookie MJ

So we see that Bowie was very good, but of course, never as good as Jordan. It’s important to note, though, that the rookie MJ was truly amazing. How amazing? Here are the top five players in Wins Produced from 1984-85:

1. Larry Bird: 27.6 Wins Produced, 0.419 WP48

2. Magic Johnson: 24.3 Wins Produced, 0.420 WP48

3. Michael Jordan: 23.3 Wins Produced, 0.355 WP48

4. Isiah Thomas: 17.8 Wins Produced, 0.277 WP48

5. Moses Malone: 16.2 Wins Produced, 0.263 WP48

Yes, Jordan was more productive – as a rookie – then every single player not named Bird or Magic. He even offered more in his first season than Isiah (and I think this was Isiah’s best season). So Jordan started his career at the top of the NBA, and it wasn’t until his second comeback with the Wizards the he fell from this perch.

So it’s certainly the case that even if we consider Bowie’s stellar first season, he still falls short of Jordan. But is the choice of Bowie truly indefensible? When we consider the fact that Bowie was an outstanding big man before he got hurt, and furthermore, the fact Portland already had Drexler (who ranked 13th in Wins Produced in 1984-85), it’s easy to understand why Portland made this choice.

And I think, a year after the fact, the choice could still be defended. Before injuries struck him down, Bowie was a very good big man. Unfortunately, we didn’t see the “good Bowie” for very long. And consequently, the people who chose Bowie over Jordan are remembered – in hindsight – as not being too bright. That memory, though, appears to be just a little bit biased.

I wonder how the rookies from the ’84 class ranked according to their college numbers? This way we might get an even more “realistic” glimpse of how the GM made their selection – to guesstimate the players’ future by evaluating their past.

What a cool article. I think you should have mentioned Sam Bowies pretty serious injuries in college. He did miss 2 years in college due to his leg injuries I think. He did return to form once he came back, but shouldn’t those injuries have been taken into account by the Blazers?

I calculated their ws/40 in college. Without stats for the NCAA in 84 you can’t make the shift for position which kinda makes the point moot but I have Bowie at WS/40s of 13.1, 12.9, and 11.9(12.6) and Jordan at WS/40s of 6.3, 10.7, and 10.8(9.19).

If college is somewhat similar to the NBA, the adjustment for position(PF/C vs. SG/SF), once throwing out Jordan’s Freshman season, would show Jordan to be the superior player in college, but not by too much. But this is all kinda meaningless without the data.

Great post! I agree with you regarding the tendency of all of us to elevate our own judgment with the benefit of information we later acquire. I wonder, though, if the question should not be whether there is hindsight bias, but instead about the relative significance franchises give to leg injuries and position when drafting 2 (apparently) equally skilled players.

I think this is particularly interesting due to the strange, tenuous (though still quite scary to Blazer fans) similarities to the current Oden-Durant situation.

What are your feelings about the tendencies of NBA execs in the draft re: size and scoring? Is height under or overvalued?

Alien Human Hybrid, the difference between Bowie-Jordan and Oden-Durant is that Durant did not play well last year. All Durant did last season was score 20 points a game very inefficiently while Jordan immediately became one of the best players in the league. If fans, writers and GMs could get past p/g they would have noticed quite clearly that Durant, on a horrible team, was not the real rookie of the year. Does this mean that Oden will be everything the scouts envisioned when he was drafted #1? I can only hope that what we see from Oden early is the Oden we all saw in the Championship game against Al Horford (the real roy) and Joakim Noah.

I love the Blazers and as much as I want to defend the Bowie pick it’s pretty tough when you consider his injuries in college. Bowie was a pretty good player when healthy, but it was pretty unrealistic to expect him to have a long healthy career with his injury history. On a side note the Rockets strongly considered trading Ralph Sampson (Kevin Durant before Kevin Durant?) for the Bulls pick so they could take Jordan. Imagine if that had happened, the Rockets might have 15 titles instead of 2.

Mr. Berri- I know that dropping the rebounds on WS to .5 creates a great estimate for PAWS. However, have you tried adding .5 to assists for college? The WS-based college number I love is (Pts-FGA-.44*FTA+.5*Reb+Ast-TO+STL+.5*Blk-.5*PF)/min. I think if you ran those on your college player numbers, sifiting out te small college (inferior competition) players, you would love the results!…If this works like it should, watch out for Mario Chalmers everyone. Ya know, if he can keep the women away.

I think the GM knows it all along – that when drafting 2 apparently equally skilled players, they always prefer centres over wing players. Whether the GM is real bright or an idiot (MJ drafting Kwame), they all seem to intuitively understand one of DB’s WOW point – “the short supply of tall people”. And I think it’s truely valuable – by planting a pine in the paint (take Shawn Bradley for instance), it does change both team’s game plan and the game’s complexity without a doubt.

An interesting point (to me at least) is whether we should classify a serious injury/ death as bad luck. In sports, agents take it as gospel that some players are fragile and some are durable. Basically, no one disputes this. But, as a matter of cold logic, it might be true that injuries are distributed randomly — with some playas lucky and some unlucky. Like the infamous “cancer clusters,” if the incidence of cancer in one’s home town = 150% or 200% of the nat. average (for that cancer) . . . many people will call e. brokovitch! But if you throw up a hat full of pennys (and chart the distribution on the floor) some tiles will contain 150%-200% of the aver.

Conclusion: clusters happen.

Successive, serious injuries might be no more than clusters. If you take production diminishment due to injury out of the analysis (ie correct for possible bum luck), it’s hard, even with hindsight, to see which player personel exec was smart or stupid. I’m willing to wager that, occasionally at least, GMs make a “right” pick, but history views it as an error due to random injury of the player. Similarly, many GMs look smart via the same modus.

Over time, randomness evens out and good GMs outperfrom bad GMs. We should be able to fairly evaluate GMs w/ a long tenure (say 5-10 years). Yet it’s hard (not impossible, just difficult) to size up a GM’s brain on the basis of a specific draft.

Obviously, in our timeline, Portland should have taken Jordan. But if he’da went out like Len Bias (NOT that MJ ever touched coke!) would it have still been the best pick?

Getting lucky a couple of times, when a team has, on average one first round pick a year, can make someone look like a genius. Missing out by the same factor of luck can make someone look like an idiot.

Good analysis. People often forget that Sam Bowie wasn’t a bad player at all. Darko over Melo and Wade was a worse pick, knowing what was known going into the draft. They had never seen Darko play in a competitive game and somehow figured that they’d develop him under Larry Brown. I don’t know if Melo would have been the right pick, but Wade was well known to be a top prospect and he’d have fit in great as a 6th man off the bench if they wanted to start with Hamilton at the 2. Heck, they could have taken Melo and traded him for something they wanted too, rather than take a rough gamble on a guy who’s never played in a real game before. Darko was no Ricky Rubio…

The issue I would take with this analysis is that it seems to suggest Portland recognized/believed it was drafting the second best player in the draft. If Portland knew Jordan was a better player than Bowie, but didn’t draft Jordan because of Drexler, then they should have found a way to trade a couple spots back in the draft. Maybe the Bulls would have traded a future pick or a player along with the #3 that year for the #1, then Portland gets their player at an appropriate draft position.

Winning teams find ways to maximize the value of their assets. Current Blazers management would not draft from the top spot in the draft and allow the best player to remain in the draft.

Tball,
I think I read somewhere that Chicago’s management apologized after the draft for taking MJ. The fans thought they needed a big man like Hakeem or Bowie. But the Bulls were picking too late and had to “settle” for MJ. If this story is true (and I am sure I read it somewhere) then it is possible that people did not believe MJ was the best talent in this draft. Even if he was believed to be as good as Bowie, though, the Blazers might still be justified in going with the big man because they had Drexler.

There’s a good book about this draft out right now: Tip-Off: How the 1984 NBA Draft Changed Basketball Forever by Flip Bondy. Word is that the Portland GM wanted Jordan after talking with coach Knight who had him in the 1984 Olympics, but ownership wanted a center. Drexler was even lobbying for Jordan saying one of them could play point or the 3. (read that in a Slam magazine)

The big revelation is that Houston had the opportunity to wind up with Jordan, Drexler, and Olajuwon. Portland was willing to give Clyde and the #3 pick for Ralph Sampson (the #1 pick the previous year). I believe that’s how the deal was supposed to have worked, maybe with something else tossed in on the Houston side.

And yes, Chicago wanted to take a center but wound up stuck with MJ. The other notable incident in that draft is that Patrick Ewing wanted to come out that year, but his mother convinced him to graduate from Georgetown before he began his professional career. If that had happened the draft probably would have gone: Akeem, Pat, Bowie and then who knows if Mike goes 4th. He could have slid down to 6th because if I recall the Sixers were set on Chuck.

The Houston Rockets were not convinced that the “twin towers” were going to work. They offered the pick to Portland before the coin toss for Mychal Thompson and Jim Paxson, both current all-stars. Portland declined, feeling they could win the toss and get Olajuwon or lose and get Bowie. They thought they were a post player away from the championship. Jack Ramsey was coach and they had won a championship before with an excellent passing center in Bill Walton and thought Bowie could do the same. When Clyde Drexler first was at Portland, he played the small forward position. If they had made the trade, the would have had Jordan, Drexler, and Olajuwon.

Did Wages of Win ever produce an article on Jordan’s second comeback? Everybody seems to think that it was a failure but lets back that up. I thought that Jordan was still very competitive as a Wizard.

One very pertinent thing to remember regarding this draft is that the Blazers had been getting thrashed by elite centers since Bill Walton went down in ’78. Kareem was particularly tough-although he would finally start to slow down in the next couple of years.

Whenever I read about the Blazers’ proposed trades from that time, I’m always stunned that no one (including then-coach Jack Ramsey) mentions they had several players who would have been far more attractive trade-bait than the young Clyde Drexler. Jim Paxson was an all-star, while Mychal Thompson, Calvin Natt, Wayne Cooper, Fat Lever and Darnell Valentine were all well-regarded players (Lever in particular would excel in the coming years after the Blazers traded him, Cooper, and I think Natt to the Nuggets in exchange for Kiki Vandeweghe). A package featuring several of these players might have secured another high draft pick or a key established player (Buck Williams perhaps?).

Of course, to many longtime Blazers fans, the worst move they ever made was in essentially giving away the rights to Moses Malone after they scored them in the 1976 ABA dispersal draft. I have no doubt that they squandered a dynasty at that point.

I fear the Blazers also messed up in ’86 by drafting both Arvydas Sabonis and Dražen Petrović (a steal in the third round, but not nearly as essential to the team as Sabonis would have been). I vividly recall having read in SI circa the summer of ’86 that the two detested each other, and I’ve always wondered if that’s why Sabas waited nine years before finally suiting up for the Blazers.

the other thing to consider was that not only did the blazers have drexler, but they had jim paxson who was also an all star off guard. bowie was GOOD, saw him play in person several times when he was running, blocking and passing. NOBODY knew jordan would become the GOAT, maybe on the same page with drexler, but not the best ever. yes it still hurts to know we could have had him and still in the same lineup with drexler, porter, kersey and buck williams. that team might have never lost…

You’ve confused me. My post was not really concerned with the difference between actual productivity as much as it was the process by which projections about value are made. (Whether or not Durant played well last year is neither here nor there. Based upon the good professor’s analysis of Durant’s freshman year, he was projected to be better than he showed this year). Besides, I hope you weren’t grouping me in with those who thought Durant was rookie of the year- I don’t think there is anything in my post that suggests support for that outcome.

The relevant point is regarding how NBA execs evaluated the talent levels of both Durant and Oden while in college, and how that compares to today.

I will refrain from drawing conclusions about the broad arc of Durant’s career based upon one season. In Kobe’s first 2 seasons he was below average- WP48 of .049 and .095, respectively.

I think the problem with this analysis is that it wasn’t big news at the time the Sam Bowie got hurt. In fact, he spent a good portion of his career at Kentucky injured, including (from memory) two straight years off.

Still, I agree with the main point. When healthy, Sam Bowie was actually a pretty good player. The player picked high in that draft who was never any good was Bowie’s college teammate, Mel (Dinner Bell) Turpin.

Barkeley had way better numbers in College than Bowie. He offered something MJ couldn’t do and that was play big. The Blazers just didn’t do their homework thats all. They felt taking the tallest guy not named Hakeem would help them. If the Blazers would have drafted Sir Charles instead of Bowie. This conversation would not matter.

There was some concern over Chuck’s work ethic (Coach Knight cut him from the ’84 Olympic team because he wouldn’t drop his weight), and Portland really wanted a passing big man in the mold of Walton (which Bowie seemed to be), but of course, in hindsight, you’re correct. Charles would have given them the rebounder they needed, and he was also a deep post threat and a great passer. He wasn’t much of a defensive presence though, and that’s another thing that Walton brought to the table. They may also have felt like they were going to get a sort of Charles light when they had Kersey pegged in the 2nd round. Don’t know about that though.

Funny how nobody ever rips Dallas for taking Big Smooth in front of the Round Mound and Stocktobot 4000.

I’ve been a blazer fan since expansion. Most all blzer fans agreed at the time that MJ was a winner and should have been taken instead of Bowie. We did need a big man but Bowie was fragile and MJ had a proven history of winning and being willing and able to take and hit the winning shots with time running out. The combined voices of blazer fans shouting “what the heck?” could be heard all the way to LA when the Bowie draft was announced

Tommy_G – That is in an interesting thought about the role of random change in injury. I might lean the other way on that issue, I don’t know. With a player like Dwyane Wade for instance, you can see the injury risk in his numbers. He scores inside and at the foul line much more than the average shooting guard. That’s part of why he is so great. But it costs his teams in missed games.

I have a sneaking suspicion that avoiding injury in the paint partly explains the popularity of the mid range jumpshot, which is a pretty inefficient use of a possession. That along with the desire of inside players to pad their points total. (Zach Randolph I am looking at you.)

Ilc0 – Its amazing how much press Rodney Stuckey has been getting. I think he was actually named to the US select squad. Clear example of a mediocre player getting a lot of credit for logging minutes on a great team. The hype is almost unbelievable considering his ts% was below 50% last year. It would not surprise me in the least if DB fired up a post about Stuckey in the near future. ;-)

How could they have passed up the chance to have MJ and Ralph Sampson together?

Remember, this was the dominant, pre-injury Sampson, a year removed from a legendary college career , the reigning NBA Rookie of the Year, and the soon-to-be MVP of the All-Star Game. And sure, no one knew Jordan would be THAT good, but it’s not exactly like no one had ever heard of him. (Fans from ACC country in those days will tell you a Sampson-Jordan combo would have been like the foundations of a dream team.)

OK, Olajuwon brought them a couple titles, but that was ten years later, with a completely revamped roster, and during the time when MJ was away from the game.

Who knows if the Rockets would have brought in the right supporting players and coaches… maybe Sampson still would have gotten hurt… maybe Jordan might have never developed.

But knowing what we knew then, I still can’t believe the Rockets passed on Jordan. The guy was the consensus collegiate player of the year, a dominant athlete built for the NBA, about as “can’t miss” a swingman propsect as you could find. And Houston already had what figured to be a dominant big man for the next decade!

Another important point: Bowie was the centerpiece of the trade with New Jersey that brought Buck Williams to the Blazers. People never mention this: Buck was THE final (and maybe most important) piece in those 89-91 Blazer teams that almost won a title. Yes, Jordan was superior, but there is one more piece of consolation.

It’s also interesting to note (in hindsight) the economic branding cost that Jordan may have brought to the Blazers/Rockets, and ultimately the league. Obviously the game hadn’t revealed itself to be the merchandise marketing force that it would soon become, mostly led by MJ. But theoretically Portland/Houston could have sold a lot more jerseys and a lot more games (and heck, maybe even city tourism) with Jordan at the helm.

However I’d probably argue that Jordan in a Blazers/Rockets uniform wouldn’t have been the force that the 23/Chi-town combo was. Things could have been a lot different for the marketability of David Stern’s league as well. I tend to side with fate on this one–Jordan was made for that Bulls uniform. Just like Bird looked great in white and green, Magic in Gold and Purple, Hakeem in red and yellow. Some things are meant to be.

I still have the newspaper articles from draft day from that year. Portland thought they were going to draft John Stockton at #19…..instead he went to Utah at #16. They were surprised and disappointed that they were not able to get him. Today’s Blazer management are not afraid of pulling the trigger on any type of draft day trade.

@ Mike:
“Did Wages of Win ever produce an article on Jordan’s second comeback? Everybody seems to think that it was a failure but lets back that up. I thought that Jordan was still very competitive as a Wizard.”

I agree, Jordan put up 23 ppg and 20 ppg respectively in his 2 seasons as a Wizard. I think the problem is he raised the bar so high as a Bull, that anything short of a deep post-season run and maybe 25 ppg or over was considered a let down. I do remember though (and have on video) the 2002 All-Star game and people were mentioning Jordan as a possible MVP candidate at the season’s midway point because the Wizards had a good record and Jordan was leading the surge, then he injured his knee and missed a bunch of games and there losses started piling up.

flight88 – Jordan was actually better than those numbers only in that he was coming off an injury going into the first season and then suffered another injury midway through the season. When healthy, his production was right up there with Bryant and Carter (though his percentages weren’t because he wasn’t getting the dunks and layups). In fact in 2002 when he played his usual 38 minutes per game he averaged 29 points (44% shooting), 7 boards, and 5 assists and his team won 57% 0f its games (a 46 win pace).

But his old knees went on him, so it doesn’t matter. His stats suffered while he kept trying to play, and his team slipped out of playoff position when he shut it down for surgery.

My favorite”what if” in the whole Portland 1984 draft question, is thinking of what it would have done for Drexler’s career. I can only imagine what having Mike there to push him in practice would have done for his defense, and Clyde was such a great playmaker… having the two of them pressing passing lanes, attacking post players from the top side, out on the break? They didn’t call it the dream team for nothing.

Great insight. Being the third most productive player (behing Bird and Magic) in his first year in the league speaks to the immediate impact Jordan had. It still boggles my mind that he fell so far..ahhh the temptation of the big man. I am sure Joe Dumars is kicking himself for not taking an MJ wannabe type (Wade or Melo), and instead going after a pathetic big. That pick alone sealed the Pistons faith for the rest of this decade as a team that simply cannot get over the hump.

OWEN, love the Zach R comment. Blazers improved dramatically when they got rid of Zach. Most fans would have agreed to give him up for free so getting Fry in trade was a total win-win for the blazers. Kevin P is a miracle worker

[...] was Bill Walton (see Is it Teamwork? A History Lesson). Then we see the story of Sam Bowie (see A Little Bit of Hindsight Bias: Reviewing the Drafting of Sam Bowie). And now we have the story of Greg Oden. Although all of this is just a coincidence, one [...]

[...] Michael Jordan, who would go on to be perhaps the greatest basketball player ever. But many will remind us that hindsight is 20/20. When we consider the the circumstances at the time, they argue, Bowie was the right pick. [...]